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Mordred stopped, placing his vambrace down on the bench, his heart sinking. For a moment he concentrates completely on his armour, how could he answer such a question? Telling her would mean her life and the lives of those whom called Camelot home. An impossible predicament.
The young knight turns to face her, his fingers brushing lightly against the metal of his armour. “I’m not hiding anything” he tells her simply.
They’ve given Summer armour, suited for a woman, because she begged, and a blade, short and light. She wields it with two hands anyway, disdaining a shield. The camp is quiet, Arthur and Guinevere gathered with the knights around one fire. She doesn’t know where Merlin is, or Gaius; she’s truly alone for the first time in a week.
And there’s a brush at the edge of her mind, at the edge of her magic, that is painfully familiar, a tugging at a bond she hadn’t known was there.
Mordred.
He’s out there, in the dark, somewhere close by. Is that what Guinevere had been concealing? Is that why she’s here? To be used against him? Morgana leads this army they’re to face, she knows; Morgana wishes to bring magic back to Camelot, to restore the old religion. Is Mordred with her?
Everything he’d said, in that last, fateful meeting, spills back into her mind. ‘It was either you or Camelot,’ he shouts, in memory.
And now Arthur is here, at Camlann, to protect Camelot. Everything Mordred had said suddenly makes terrible sense. And hideously, she realises, fate had used her as a pawn to push him along, to drive him away from Camelot.
He lets himself into the tent, Morgana seating herself at the oak table in the middle of the tent. “And what news do you bring me Mordred?” she questions, holding out a goblet to him which he takes gladly, downing most of it before he answers her question. “Camelot…Arthur, they’re about a day or so away, but that is at best, we came across them, they didn’t see us.”
Mordred takes a seat, continuing to sip from his goblet tentatively. “An army of perhaps ten thousand,” he adds and she nods. “Go rest, I will wake you later and we shall plan.”
Summer is trusted. Merlin, Gaius, Guinevere, they’ve all vouched for her — if they had known where Mordred was, they had never seemed to suspect her of knowing, had never held their relationship against her. So it’s shockingly easy to slip out of the camp, trusting that newly-discovered bond, and run in the dark.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing, why she’s doing it. She just has to see him. Once more, if that’s what it means. This deep into destiny, she doesn’t truly believe she can break the cycle, but she’d still rather hitch her destiny to his, to the Mordred she fell in love with, than ride at Guinevere’s side.
A single bobbing flame lights her way, low by her feet, until she finds Morgana’s camp.